Constrained Balancing: The UK, Germany, and ESDP

Abstract

What are the determinants of EU member states' policies towards the creation and design of European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP)? This paper argues that members' policies can be understood as instances of 'constrained balancing'; i.e. as attempts to balance US power after the end of the Cold War, which were constrained by the peculiar institutions of security policy in which individual members' policies had become embedded during the Cold War. The paper constructs an analytical framework which is informed by neorealist and historial institutionalist thought and which is intended to capture the interplay of the constraints and incentives for members' policies created by the international distribution of power and institutions of security policy. For illustrative purposes, this framework is briefly applied to shed light on four different aspects of Britich and German ESDP policies.